Paramount: A Laborious Process Behind UHD Blu-rays

In April, Paramount Home Media Distribution announced Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness would be its first Ultra High-Def (UHD) Blu-ray Discs, hitting retail on June 14. But the work to get the discs made properly for 4K players and TVs began years ago, according to Ed Hoxsie, SVP of worldwide product production and fulfillment for the studio.

From before a film even hits theaters, studios are already laying the technical groundwork needed for home entertainment, and with UHD Blu-ray, there’s never been as much advanced legwork needed: 4K video, high-dynamic range (HDR 10), next-gen audio codecs, wider color gamut, and a whole new collection of consumer electronics hardware to test the final product against.

“We’ve gone through about five or six sessions with [that] same number of eyes at Paramount looking at masters, all the way to compression, as well as having third party vendors look at it as well,” Hoxsie said. “And we don’t just give it to a vendor and say ‘do it,’ we actually spend days at these facilities, and we’re integral in the set-up.”

The “Star Trek” releases — coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the franchise — were re-mastered for UHD Blu-ray to include more than four times the video resolution of the 1080p found on standard Blu-ray, HDR 10 for better contrast, more than double the number of colors found on high-def, and include Dolby Atmos soundtracks remixed for home theaters that can handle the object-based sound technology.